When women
feel badly, they have a curiosity to analyze their sufferings for
themselves,
and they have a fear of coming under the law of disease.
~ Phineas Quimby

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Phineas
Parkhurst Quimby

§

tecnh

Why
are Females More Sickly than Males?

August
1860

Why
are females more sickly than males? This question is often asked. The
answer comes, “They have nothing to employ themselves about, so
they sit down and talk over their aches and pains, and in this way
they make themselves sick.” Now if sickness is a thing independent
of talk, why should talking about it make it? Suppose a farmer sits
down and talks about commencing haying - would the grass be mowed by
talking about it?

There
is more in talking than people think, for if disease is independent
of the mind, then talking can't affect anything. Now everyone knows
and acknowledges that by talking or thinking about a disease, they
can make it - or at least aggravate it; and to aggravate a disease,
it must be something connected with the mind, or the mind cannot make
it.

Everyone
knows that females have more inquisitiveness than men. They want to
see more. They have more curiosity than men. If you do not believe
it, go with an intelligent female into a carpet factory or any
manufactory. Or go to Saratoga or any other place - and if you do not
find that you cannot gratify all their inquiries, then I will give it
up.

I
know from experience that females think and bring more to pass in one
week than men do in four. There is a difference in the word
“thinking,” but no difference in the acts. If I think of a horse,
that is all. So it is all - if it is not accompanied with some
knowledge of this world (or science).

Here
is the difference between the male and the female. Not one man in ten
thinks mechanically. To think mechanically is to analyze the thing
thought of. To hear a thing named and not investigate it is the
wisdom of this world; but to think from the wisdom of science is to
investigate and understand. A person cannot think, without having
some curiosity to be gratified. Thinking mechanically, so that the
world can be put in possession of something new, requires labor; and
the person who puts another's thought into practice is an operator;
but to repeat another's thought requires no thought, but memory. The
mocking bird or parrot can do that. But to build a belief from
another's thought requires as much labor as to discover a science.

So
you see, man never has, as yet, been able to establish Jesus'
science. In Jesus' day, he never got anyone to teach it. False
Christs have appeared and have deceived many, as he foretold that
they should, and we see it fulfilled to the letter. Now Jesus warned
the people against these false guides, for they contract the
understanding and imprison the senses (or knowledge) in theories and
beliefs, which are of their own invention.

In
regard to disease, the wisdom of these guides accounts for all bodily
aches and pains as arising from some local disease. So when women
feel badly, they have a curiosity to analyze their sufferings for
themselves, and they have a fear of coming under the law of disease.
Between both of these feelings, they are much excited and disturbed.
If they are unfortunate enough to make a disease, then they have
proved man's theory of disease and are delivered up to man to be
cured. If they do not succeed in making any local disease, they must
be encouraged that they can or will be called nervous, spleeny or
hypochrondriacal and receive no sympathy from anyone. If they had
less intelligence, they would follow in the wake of public opinion
and make a disease, accordingly. But having some knowledge that they
have nothing to thank the men for, they hold on to it; sometimes with
great tenacity, even when the law of disease threatens them on every
hand.

Now
when some person comes to them and attempts to claim this
intelligence and release it from its imprisonment, where man's wisdom
has enclosed it - sometimes they recognize it as a superior wisdom
and receive it with joy and thanksgiving. And sometimes they are so
wedded to their opinions of disease that they will not recognize any
intelligence - or even virtue, except as coming through some advocate
of disease. In such a case, the disease is long and intricate. The
little wisdom that has fought against the various approaches of
disease has been overcome and fails to recognize its true friend, at
first.